Text-To-Speech (TTS) systems for converting text into synthesized speech are entering the mainstream of advanced telecommunications applications. A typical TTS system proceeds through several steps for converting text into synthesized speech. First, a TTS system may include a text normalization procedure for processing input text into a standardized format. The TTS system may perform linguistic processing, such as syntactic analysis, word pronunciation, and prosodic prediction including phrasing and accentuation. Next, the system performs a prosody generation procedure, which involves translation between the symbolic text representation to numerical values of a fundamental frequency, duration, and amplitude. Thereafter, speech is synthesized using a speech database or template comprising concatenation of a small set of controlled units, such as diphones. Increasing the size and complexity of the speech template may provide improved speech synthesis. Examples of TTS systems are described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,003,005, entitled “Text-To-Speech System And A Method And Apparatus For Training The Same Based Upon Intonational Feature Annotations Of Input Text”, and U.S. Pat. No. 5,774,854, entitled “Text To Speech System”, which are hereby incorporated by reference. Additional information about TTS systems may be found in “Talking Machines: Theories, Models and Designs”, ed G. Bailly and C. Benuit, North Holland (Elsevier), 1992.